2. Themes and Big Q’s How was science used to bolster the imperial enterprise? How was Darwinian natural selection appropriated and misinterprated in Social Darwinism and Eugenics?

3. Race and Empire The Great Chain of Being reinforces a racial heirarchy Classification of natural world leads to classification and reification of races

4. Science and Imperial Enterprise Geography – measuring and claiming of new territory Anthropology – the mismeasure of “primitive” peoples and the display of the Other Racial anthropoligists advocated “polygenism”; Louis Aggasiz strong proponent

5. Darwin on Human Origins and “Races of Men” “It might be enquired whether man, like so many other animals, has given rise to varieties and sub-races…or to races… that might be classed as doubtful species… Do the races or species of men, whichever term may be applied, encroach on a replace one another, so that some finally become extinct?” “Nor is the difference slight in the moral disposition between a barbarian… and a Howard or Clarkson…Differences of this kind between the highest men of the highest races and the lowest savages, are connected by the finest gradations. Therefore it is possible that they might pass and be developed into each other.” Charles Darwin, The Descent of Man (1871)

6. Darwin and Human Origins (cont) Darwinian evolution: no particular heirarchy, common descent, but divergent branches Developmental (neo- Lamarckians and recapitulationists): racial heirarchy; “lower races” preserve earlier evolutionary paths or stages

7. Herbert Spencer and Social Darwinism Social Darwinism in American Thought by Richard Hofstader (1944) Natural laws applied to human societies Justifies social inequality and resistance to amelioration of poverty. Potential evolutionary power of warfare (not Spencer’s idea, but taken up by others)  cultural influence on World War I Hard or blending heredity: both explain social hierarchy (remember, Spencer is neo-Lamarckian!).

8. Andrew Carnegie and The Gospel of Wealth (1900) “The price which society pays for the law of competition, like the price it pays for cheap comforts and luxuries, is also great, but the advantages of this law are also greater still than the cost…But whether the law be benign or not…it is best for the race, because it ensures the survival of the fittest in every department. We accept and welcome, therefore, as conditions to which we must accommodate ourselves, great inequality of the environment, the concentration of business, industrial and commercial, in the hands of the few; and the law of competition between these, as being not only beneficial, but essential to the future progress of the race.” Andrew Carnegie, 1900

9. Francis Galton and “Good Breeding” Coins term “Eugenics” in 1869 Hereditary Genius Concept of “isolated genius” and fear of regression to the mean; “swamping” by poor stock. Encourage breeding of fit pedigrees; discourage breeding of unfit. “Eugenics is the self-direction of human evolution”

10. Case Study of Eugenics: The Juke Family (1874-1916) and Kallikak Family

11. Positive Eugenics vs. Negative Eugenics. Positive Eugenics: Fit Baby contests; marriage counseling; marriage laws Fits also with neo – Lamarckian approaches to heredity Most c ommon form of eugenics found around the world (Brazil, Soviet Russia, Kenya, Mexico, etc) Negative Eugenics: Segregation or sterilization of “unfit”, mentally deficient. Goal is to eliminate “bad stock” from gene pool: Immigration Restriction Act of 1924 60,000 sterilized in united states (1909 – 1943) Bolstered by Mendelian genetics, hard heredity (Weismann’s germ plasm).

12. Case study: Buck v. Bell (1927) Carrie Buck sterilized by Virginia state after giving birth out of wedlock; decision upheld by US Supreme Court as mental deficient. Raises crucial issues of gender and class: promiscuity frequently equated with mental deficiency (Buck most likely abused by foster relation); Social Darwinian ideas of poverty also tied to intelligence and fitness “Three generation of imbeciles are enough.” Walter Brandeis.

13. California Sterilization and Nazi Germany 30,000 sterilized in California alone; sterilization law on the books until 1970s (scandal of sterilizing women of color in East Los Angeles). Prominent California leaders members of eugenics movement including Luther Burbank, David Starr Jordan (president of Stanford)  eugenics not a “fringe” activity, part of mainstream reform movement Carried out on mentally ill, poor, immigrants, women  race, class and gender crucial to this history Nazi sterilization law modeled on California’s; over 200,000 sterilized.

14. Eugenics and Darwinian Synthesis Variation, recessive genes undermines negative eugenics  timeline to “breed out” bad genetic stock grows to thousands of years Proponents of eugenics include: Julian Huxley, Herman Muller, RA Fischer  idealist vision of society Opponents: JBS Haldane, Theodosius Dobzhansky Nature vs Nurture: importance of environment on development and success Nazi horrors lead to label of pseudoscience  many scientists disturbed by uses of biology in warfare

15. UNESCO Statement on Race (1949) All humans from one species with common ancestor Tiny genetic differences between different populations of humans means “…the likenesses between men are far greater than their differences.” “What is perceived is largely preconceived, so that each group arbitrarily tends to misrepresent the variability which occurs as a difference which fundamentally separates that group from all others.”

16. The End